Peter Hess—afterwards Von Hess—was born at Diisseldorf in 1792, and accompanied his younger brother Heinrich Maria to Munich in 1806. Being of an age to receive vivid impressions, he felt the stirring impulses of the time, and became a painter of skirmishes and battles. In 1813-15 he was allowed to join the staff of General Wrede, who commanded the Bavarians in the military operations which led to the abdication of Napoleon ; and there he gained novel experiences of war and a taste for extensive travel. In the course of years he successively visited Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. On Prince Otho’s election to the Greek throne King Louis sent Peter Hess to Athens to gather materials for pictures of the war of liberation. The sketches which he then made were placed, forty in number, in the Pinakothek, after being copied in wax on a large scale (and little to the edification of German feeling) by Nilsen, in the northern arcades of the Hofgarten at Munich. King Otho’s entrance into Nauplia was the subject of a large and crowded canvas now in the Pinako- thek, which Hess executed in person. From these, and from battlepieces on a scale of great size in the Royal Palace, as well as from military episodes executed for the ezar Nicholas, and the battle of Waterloo now in the Munich tallery, we gather that Hess was a clever painter of horses. His conception of subject was lifelike, and his drawing in- variably correct, but his style is not so congenial to modern taste as that of the painters of touch. He finished almost too carefully with thin medium and pointed tools; and on that account he lacked to a certain extent the boldness of Horace Vernet, to whom he was not unaptly compared. He died suddenly, full of honours, at Munich, in April 1871. Several of his genre pictures, horse hunts, and brigand scenes may be found in the gallery of Munich.
Karl Hess, the third son of Karl Christoph Hess, born at Diisseldorf in 1801, was also taught by his father, who hoped that he would obtain distinction as an engraver. Karl, however, after engraving one plate after Adrian Ostade, turned to painting under the gnidance of Wagenbauer of Munich, and then studied under his elder brother Peter. But historical composition proved to be as contrary to his taste as engraving, and he gave himself exclusively at last to illustrations of peasant life in the hill country of Bavaria. He became clever alike in representing the people, the animals, and the landscape of the Alps, and with constant means of reference to nature in the neighbourhood of Reichenhall, where he at last resided, he never produced anything that was not impressed with the true stamp of a kindly realism. Some of his pictures in the museum of Munich will serve as examples of his manner. He died at Reichenhall on the 16th of November 1874.
HESSE, or Hessia (in German Hessen), an old country of Germany, situated on both banks of the Rhine and Main, north and south of Frankfort, has had different boundaries at different times. Its greatest length was about 95 miles, while its breadth has varied considerably. Several detached portions of territory were also included m Hesse.
The earliest recorded inhabitants of the district were the Chatti, whose chief settlement Mattium, probably near Gudensberg, was destroyed by Germanicus in 15 a.d. The Chatti, merged in the Franks, migrated westward, and their place in Hesse was taken by the Saxons. Among these, when conquered by the German kings, several “ gaus ” or earldoms were founded, some of whose possessors after the death of Charlemagne rose to great power. Two families—those of Werner and of Giso, count of Gudensberg—became latterly the most important. In 1130 the heiress of the Gisos married the landgrave of Thuringia, who thus became the overlord of Hesse. In 1247 the Thuringian male line became extinct, and Hesse, along with the other possessions of the landgrave, was involved in a prolonged war of succession. In 1263 Sophia, duchess of Brabant and niece of the last landgrave, received by treaty the landgraviate of Hesse, as it was from that time called, and two years later resigned it in favour of her son, Henry the Child, the ancestor of the present house of Hesse. Till the death of Philip the Magnanimous in 1567, Hesse continued to be regarded as one state, though sometimes shared by two rulers ; but at that date Philip’s four sons divided the landgraviate into Hesse-Cassel, Hesse- Marburg, Hesse-Rheinfels, and Hesse-Darmstadt., Of these the second and third lapsed by inheritance in 1583 and 1604 to the others, which became the chief lines. The small landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg was formed in 1596 of part of Hesse-Darmstadt. Hesse-Darmstadt, since the annexation of the other two to Prussia in 1866, has been the only independent part of Hesse left, and generally receives the common name.
Hesse-Nassau is a province of Prussia, formed in 1866 frcm parts of Hesse-Cassel and the dukedom of Nassau. Hesse-Philippsthal was a collateral Jine of the honse of Hesse-Cassel, founded in 1630, and extinct in 1820. Hess-Rarchfeld, Hesse-Butzbach, Hesse-Rothenburg, Hesse- Rumpenheim, and Hesse-Wanfried were collateral lines of little importance.
For further information see Teuthorn, Ausfiihrliche Geschichte des Hessen, 1777-80; Wenck, Hessische Landesgeschichte, 1783 and 1808; Plister, Veber den Chattischen und LHessischen Stamm und die tilteste Geschichte des Chattisehen Stamines, 1868; Ioffmeister, Historisch-genealogisches Handbuch iiber alle Linien des Regenten- hauses Hessen, 1874; Rommel, Geschichte von Hessen, 1820-58, 10 vols.; Heppe, Hessische Kirchengeschichtc, 1876.
HESSE-CASSEL, in German Kurhessen, i.e., Electoral Hesse, now forming the govermment district of Cassel in the Prussian province of Nassau, was till 1866 a landgraviate and electorate of Germany, consisting of several detached masses of territory, to the N.E. of Frankfort- on-the-Main. It contained a superficial area of 3699 square miles, and its population in 1864 was 745.063.
The line of Hesse-Cassel was founded by William TV., surnamed the Wise, eldest son of Philip the Magnanimons. On his father’s death in 1567 he received one half of Hesse, with Cassel as his capital ; and this formed the landgraviate of Jlesse-Cassel. Additions were made to it hy inheritance from his brother’s possessions, while, as compensation for losses sustained in the Thirty Years’ War, a large part of the countship of Schanmburg and other territory was acquired towards the middle of the 17th century. Charles I., who ascended the throne in 1670, was thie first ruler who adopted the system of hiring his soldiers out to foreign powers as mercenaries, as a means of impreving the national finances. Frederick I., the next landgrave, had become by marriage king of Sweden, and on his death was succeeded in the landgraviate by his brother William VIIL, who fonght as an ally of England during the Seven Years’ War. From his successor Frederick II., who had become a Roman Catholie, 22,000 Hessian troops were hired hy
